Some very powerful tools now coming to blender. Live LSCM that works almost like Modo's implementation. The fluid is wonderful. Check out the video demos.

Here is some of the latest list:

Features:
- Bug fixes as would be expected
- New lamp visualization on the 3D view by Matt
- Live LSCM Unwrap (http://orange.blender.org/wp-content/themes/orange/images/media/lscm_live.mov)
- Dual Monitor support (http://projects.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2005-November/005071.html)
- New Filtering options (http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Samples_and_Filtering.723.0.html)
- Tiff support
- Fluid simulation revamp, now it works with modifiers and has time (http://www10.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/%7Esinithue/temp/fluid_timeanim.mpg)

Complete list of what is coming in the 2.40 final release is here:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_40_alpha.598.0.html

uncle_frankie

11-24-2005, 11:56 AM

Live LSCM looks like a great tool. My paying job requires me to use Maya but I'm currently using Blenders LSCM to layout the uv's for my Maya models. It's great and saves me so much time. But I don't really understand what pinning the uvs does. Could anyone volunteer a simple laymans explanation?

thanks in advance

brkn

11-24-2005, 12:18 PM

It's interesting to note that all these new improvements are just what's gone in over the last week or so :) There's a lot more than this coming in the 2.40 release, for a full list (working document) check the wiki here: http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Release_Notes

Re. the fluids, here's a quick test that Johnny Matthews made, using a fluid simulation with a lattice modifier on top: http://projects.blender.org/sharea/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=0001_0019.avi

Basically, pinning the vertices just means that they are forced to stay in the same place when LSCM is recalculated. So the other UVs that aren't pinned will be properly laid out between them using the LSCM algorithm to prevent stretching, keep good edge angles, etc.

Basically you can imagine the pins like you're putting pins in a piece of skin on a board, and moving the pins to stretch out the skin in whatever way you like.

Here's a better demo video than the one I recorded yesterday (linked at the top). The test character's .blend file is linked from our blog here: http://orange.blender.org/blog/licence-to-drive

in maya7 you can have a pretty similiar workflow
to set up uv's using a lattice deformer too.

brkn

11-24-2005, 02:55 PM

Elvis75k:

Yeah, there are tools I guess pretty similar to that in Blender, with Proportional edit. But the great thing about the live mode is that it's not just squashing and stretching the UVs proportionally, it's actually running the LSCM UV unwrap calculation to determine how it distributes the UVs while preserving local angles to minimise distortion.

lukep

11-24-2005, 03:40 PM

Some very powerful tools now coming to blender. Live LSCM that works almost like Modo's implementation. The fluid is wonderful. Check out the video demos.

Here is some of the latest list:

Features:
- Bug fixes as would be expected
- New lamp visualization on the 3D view by Matt
- Live LSCM Unwrap (http://orange.blender.org/wp-content/themes/orange/images/media/lscm_live.mov)
- Dual Monitor support (http://projects.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2005-November/005071.html)
- New Filtering options (http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Samples_and_Filtering.723.0.html)
- Tiff support
- Fluid simulation revamp, now it works with modifiers and has time (http://www10.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/%7Esinithue/temp/fluid_timeanim.mpg)

Complete list of what is coming in the 2.40 final release is here:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_40_alpha.598.0.html

Just a note :

- Dual screen is *NOT* officially supported. It happens to work on Os X (and on some windows setups) if screens are on same card but that is all. the commit you refer to just allow to setup the window on secondary screen when launched from command line

LetterRip

11-24-2005, 07:27 PM

Dual screen is *NOT* officially supported.

I was gonna say when did lukep slip that in? I certainly haven't seen it i the logs :)

LetterRip

gabio

11-24-2005, 09:40 PM

Dual Screen setup always worked great for me since... 2.37, and maybe earlier.
Windows and linux. This is my setup:
Nvidia Fx5200:
One rgb output, one dvi output.
On both OS the desktop is shared on both screens. Extended horizontally.
Giving me a 2560x1024 screen. I just need to cut the Blender screen in half. Some performance cut appear, as my card have to render 2x a normal screen size. I loose 50% of drawing speed. For me: 600fps --> 300fps on starting scene

Womball

11-24-2005, 09:55 PM

It's interesting to note that all these new improvements are just what's gone in over the last week or so :) There's a lot more than this coming in the 2.40 release, for a full list (working document) check the wiki here: http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Release_Notes

What else is coming might I ask? More texture related updates hopefully?

LetterRip

11-24-2005, 10:12 PM

Womball,

asside from a few improvements (better anti aliasing, the live lscm, assorted bug fixes) since I last updated the Release Notes section there won't be much if any more changes prior to release (we do have scripts to bundle and update also, which will add some nice features too). As you'll see in the release notes absolutely astounding improvements have been made in the animation system, as well as a large number of other improvements and additions in Blenders other systems.

Major texturing and rendering improvements are targeted for the next major release after this release. Some things planned are multipass rendering, support for deep painting rendering formats, possibly also node based texturing (this is only a maybe) and compositing. Hopefully we will see 'blow you away' improvements to those areas as have occured in Blenders animation tools.

LetterRip

Womball

11-24-2005, 11:36 PM

I hope so! It was fun watching blender improve a lot in a short time! Hopefully the next release will be just as dramatic. Node based texturing, isn't that what they use in XSI?

ambient-whisper

11-25-2005, 12:44 AM

I hope so! It was fun watching blender improve a lot in a short time! Hopefully the next release will be just as dramatic. Node based texturing, isn't that what they use in XSI?

and houdini, and maya, and messiah, and probably most 3d apps out there.

LetterRip

11-25-2005, 01:08 AM

Yep as ambient whisper notes node based texturing is a pretty common paradigm.

LetterRip

Womball

11-25-2005, 02:46 AM

What's the advantage of node based texturing? You can update it easier without recompiling the source code? I heard in a tuhupuu release there was a relax UV's. I am not sure what a tuhupuu is, but it seems this feature is not going into the official 2.4 release.

LetterRip

11-25-2005, 04:16 AM

tuhopuu was an experimental tree for blender - where coders could put code that wasn't well enough tested to go into the main blender build, or if the code had known limitations.

There are some features that were available in Tuhopuu 3 that will not be available in Blender including some useful things for UVs. Unfortunately the maintainer of the tuhopuu branch of blender no longer has the time or interest to maintain it. Generally now code either is maintained in peoples personal branches, committed directly, or put in the blender patch tracker. We will likely change to a better versioning tool in the 'near' future.

LetterRip

pnoland

11-25-2005, 05:01 AM

God I hope they start working on a node based material editor...or hell ANY update to the material editor. I don't think the current editor is very intuitive...feels kinda clunky to me to get good results with my materials unlike C4d or any other editor I've used. The newer features are cool though. Blender is growing on me more an more with these cool updates.

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